Hello and welcome to this special interview where we shall be talking a bit about Napoleon today,

and I am joined by the masterful apostolic majesty. How are you, sir? Hello, it's lovely to be here in person for the first time. Yeah. And it just occurred to, I think both you and I, just a few minutes before this, that this is taking place on Bastille Day, so it's more appropriate, or at least it's going to be recorded on Bastille Day. Right, right, yeah.

It's great to have you in.

Um, right, yeah.

It's great to have you in.

I don't think it's needless sycophancy to say I've very rarely ever known,

let alone met someone with your depth of knowledge.

So it's always a pleasure to pick your brain.

It really is.

So today we thought we talk about the question, it was Napoleon

good for France? That's what you thought would be an interesting topic of discussion.

I did indeed. And the reason I think it's a very important question and to again emphasize

France specifically is that

so much of Napoleonic may I guess and the whole notion of grandeur, Gaulist grandeur, is wrapped up in the association that France has, you can say, the natural right to be the great leader of Europe in more ways than one,

not just in terms of culture, but also in terms of military might and glory, etc.

And no figure ostensibly would seem to epitomize that more so than Napoleon, Napoleon LeGron, Napoleon the Great, the man who at one

point conquered Europe and then lost it all within the space of a couple of years. And my contention here,

looking at Napoleon, is that I believe this is a man who was given so many opportunities to build France an unassailable legacy,

not just in territory, but in terms of culture and its economy, and his ability to trade and dominate European markets.

And several years ago, I came to the conclusion that Napoleon had bungled that opportunity,

and he had bungled it in a way that was so decisive that I believe that left France, almost

bordering on second-tier nation status forever more. And when you look at a politician

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